Mutation/Evolution note

Half-Life Series
#21

Lmao. That needs to be a mod. But sadly no, I think the Gonarch has lost it’s ability to attach to hosts by the time it reaches that age.

Except the giant maw in it’s chest and difference in internal organs. The giant freaking claws it grows out of hands… the fact that at some stage a bipedal creature once ‘jacked’ turns into a damn Gonarch. ( assuming )

Well, it can change the biological structure of it’s host somehow, I assume it’s some form of DNA changing toxin or something, released once ‘coupling’ has happened in order to start ‘maturing’. ( assuming )

I always saw the Half-Life series as one that took the science fairly seriously ( yeah I know the idiocy in that statement ). Radiation kills all carbon based life forms, it doesn’t mutate them ( at least not to that kind of degree ). Although considering we are talking about aliens anything is possible.

#22

The ‘maw’ in the chest is just a vertically cut open chest cavity, with broken ribs & regular human organs.
Jokrine made a great picture showing what’s what.

They look more like ordinary fingers to me, only elongated. Either way, it could be done via altering DNA, but it could just as easily explained by chemical effect on the tissue without any DNA change at all. Maybe it’s producing chemicals that stimulates growth or weakens the cartilage between bones, causing them to stretch. We don’t know for a fact. It’s just the constant use of DNA is what gets me.

There weren’t any zombies found on Xen, the only place the Gonarch was found. Yet there was zombies all over earth in HL1 & 2. More likely than not, the Gonarch is a final life-cycle stage of a headcrab that doesn’t have a host.

#23

Actually, the hands don’t look that different from actual human hands… just without the skin, muscle, and tendons.

#24

Ok, well maybe not DNA changing, but really, I wouldn’t get caught up on such a trivial thing as 3 letters. Growth toxin sure, it doesn’t really matter. I suppose I was getting more at the idea of the original zombies from the original half-life, which to be fair I shouldn’t.

I don’t buy the Gonarch being the final life stage of an unmutated headcrab though. That would mean the entire point of taking hosts is simply for protection of the ‘queen’ headcrab or whatever.

I always thought of the Gonarch as a mutated Vortigaunt. Think about it, they are the only creature we see that would be a suitable host ( bar Race X ). However they would be extremely difficult for a headcrab to attach to, due to their natural abilities with electricity, which is why I figured we never see headcrabvorts, and we only see one Gonarch, they are that rare.

Personally I like the ideas opposing force put into play with zombies and their evolution with the Gonomes.

Anyway, my main point still stands. Personally I think fast and poison headcrabs is due to self controlled evolution/mutation on the headcrabs part, not on outside influences.

I’m not exactly sure as to why the combine would go to the trouble of creating more deadly forms of headcrab, only to put normal headcrabs into their rockets, and potentially cause themselves more problems by releasing them into the wild.

#25

There could also be the theory that it’s just a game and there was no evolution/mutation because valve put them in there as a new enemy ಠ_ಠ

#26

Don’t be such a killjoy.

It just kind of bugs me that some people keep repeating this so specifically. (calling combine soldiers mutants, humanoid-aliens &/or human-alien hybrids gets on my nerves too)

Not really much of a difference except animations, and ribs that seem to go on forever.

What’s so bad about that? It doesn’t just protect the gonarch, but it protects themselves from their host as well as makes them stronger & possibly provides them with nutrition.

I’m sorry, but that is just utterly ridiculous in how silly that idea is. Why would a headcrab need to attach itself to a biped only to turn back into a giant headcrab with an eggsack? Also note the fact that headcrabs & vorts won’t even attack on another in HL1.

They’re just taller, faster, stronger & throw gunk from their chest. (exactly like bullsquids) Even then we don’t know if that’s a part of their life cycle or if they were just mutated by the toxic waste that can be seen in their backs.

That’s actually a pretty reasonable argument.

#27

I think the point for the headcrab rockets was to turn the dissenting people into zombies, which are much easier to kill than humans with guns.

#28

Which the Combine never get off their asses and do.

Speaking of headcrabs, where did you get your avatar?

#29

Yes piefish, if you don’t wan’t to join in our nerdy discussion on things that don’t exist then be gone with you!

Fair doos. I wouldn’t let it get to you, but petpeevs are petpeevs. I’m always trying to explain to people what the synths are.

Well the arms seem much more mutated. They seem to eat through the maw, and in the HD pack they started growing green lumps on them like what the Gonomes have. ( Since when is this confirmed to be toxic waste? I always saw it as a sign of growth. )

Yeah, I suppose. It’s just less interesting to me in the end. I also wonder what the Gonarch has to protect itself from :stuck_out_tongue:
I would find it much more interesting if they evolved from the creatures they attached to. That would make them imo truly diverse, and extremely able to adapt to any world they find themselves on ( assuming some form of DNA splicing occurs ).

The Gonarch to me doesn’t look a thing like a headcrab. To me it looks like a vortzombie, turned into a Gonome turned into a { VERY LONG TIME } turned into a Gonarch. Why would it? Why not?
To me, the idea that this creature evolved to take over other creatures simply for bodyguards just doesn’t seem right. I see it more as a super evolved parasite. There are parasites on earth that can take over fish and make them suicidal, all so they get eaten by bigger fish so they can start their reproductive cycle, in the bigger fish.

To grow from a headcrab to a Gonarch would take a very long time. It’d still take ages even if growing from a zombie. However we don’t see bigger headcrabs anywhere, so I assume the normal headcrabs we see are their largest size and to develop any further they have to attach to a host.

You realise that if headcrabs do grow bigger to the stage of a Gonarch, we haven’t seen them, they wouldn’t be able to attach to anything, and would generally be a bigger target that couldn’t fit and hide anywhere. Also, there would be tons of them. Although the idea of a giant headcrab acting like an attack dog is a damn freaky thought.

Yes I forgot about headcrabs not attacking vorts in HL:1. However they do in HL:2 and it’s episodes, so I’d put that down to an oversight with programming
and not knowing how the story would go.

Hell, perhaps the Nihilanth didn’t use slave collars when he first took over the Vorts, just the slaver drones (?). Perhaps they were designed to inhibit headcrabs once he realised his Vorts were getting taken over and went on a major attempt at extinction once he discovered the ball biting scariness of what they turn into.

(That’s my theory in a nutshell, I would love to see the headcrab labs in Black Mesa ( No not the gamma labs ))

P.S if any of that comes across as angry debating rather than discussing I do apologise. I do enjoy these nerdy discussions.

I’m not saying it’s a bad choice of weapon, or wondering why they do it. I merely wonder, if the normal headcrabs work so well ( they clearly do), and you still have the job of clearing out the zombies, why make things harder for yourself.

It wouldn’t be a design choice because normal headcrabs aren’t good enough, and I’d much prefer to clear out normal zombies than have to go through fast and poison ones.

Perhaps it was an experiment and they managed to get loose?

Now that’s something for the Opposing Force 2 expansions ( PLEAAAASE MAKE THOSE EXPANSIONS )

#30

That would be true, but the combine have used poison and fast headcrabs in their rockets as well. Fast in hl2, poison in the container during the strider fight in ep1.

Also my avatar is a photoshop I made of a lego gordon picture I found online.

#31

I dare not question headcrab rockets, because they are just too awesome.

#32

so many teories @.@

I just think that with a completely new environment full of vegetation and “hosts” the headcrabs could evolve easily to fast headcrabs and I think the poison one is mutated by the combine. I mean… It’s the first headcrab that I see attaching to host’s back, with a different colour than the original and even with the skill of attaching to the roof (episode 2 if you open a door in a room when you have to disable a generator, a poison headcrab attacks you dettaching from a roof.) Also they have “poison” teeth or something in the mouth that allows them to infect their victims. That could be by evolution as the gonarch can throw acid.

#33

Interesting notes. I actually quite like this idea. Fast headcrabs being an evolution, whilst poison ones being combine mutation.

“Interesting… would you look at that”

#34

I could make a joke about every fingerbone there looking like a penis, but…

:smiley:

#35

oh I also forgot to mention that in hl2: Lost Coast the headcrab cannisters in the church only containned Poison headcrabs.

Also. The fast headcrabs are a more “non-mutated evolution like process” of the normal headcrab. Faster legs to attach in faster victims (humans running), A more cranium like head/torso wich could make it easier to attach on human heads. The poison headcrab instead has slower legs, a more easy to see colour, and is not sylent as the other two headcrabs. It’s head is also like the normal headcrab but bigger. To attach in other parts than host’s head. This is heavily difficult to evolve in just 20 years (20 since combine took the control of earth is when Gordon arrives). Also it had a “frontal mouth” to show to it’s victims. A quality that any other kind of headcrab, even gonarchs have.

#36

Wow, it sounds like Marc is hinting that bullsquids might be in the game eventually. That would be a sight for sore eyes.

#37

I like to think the headcrab was originally a symbiotic creature rather than a parasite. It “coupled” with some other kind of organism (animal, plant, fungi, whatever), for which they both received a mutual benefit, and the headcrabs mistake humans for that organism. Zombies are asymmetric, which is rarely found in nature, so it looks as if something the headcrab is doing isn’t functioning how it’s supposed to when performed on a human. Perhaps the headcrab secreted chemicals that caused beneficial growth and development in the organism, and the same chemicals when used on a human mutate them horribly, because they were never meant to change in the way this organism does.

Being harder to clear out works both ways. They presumably use fast and poison headcrabs to make it harder for the rebels to survive and clear out the infestation. And they don’t necessarily always need to clear out the zombies at all - Ravenholm, for example, was bombarded with headcrab cannisters and then left to rot.

As for why they still use regular headcrabs when fast and poison ones are available, maybe the altered versions are more unstable or can’t be produced fast enough.

#38

For Your Consideration: Female homo sapiens managed to modify their fertility cycle from “couple times per life” to “once every month”, over the course of couple (tens of) thousand years. Compared to the hundreds of millions of years it took to the original lifeforms to make similarly simple changes, they would have thought (if they were sentient), that there must have been something unnatural at work in our female’s evolution. Yet there wasn’t, they just managed to adopt at a very fast rate (in terms of evolutionary periods, no pun intended).

#39

Didn’t know that, but judging by the rate humans have sex its no wonder those that were fertile more often had kids more often, leading to a rapid rise in frequently-fertile-females :jizz: :3

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.